L'âge de cristal

I saw "Logan's run" (the movie) yesterday and it reminds me of this TV series I used to watch a long time ago.The movie which I saw in a movie theater drastically wandered from the novel:for instance the part of sandman Francis would amaze people who only know the movies and the TV series.

The TV episodes kept only Jessica,Logan and Francis and added REM ,a robot (but a human one ,not the nasty robot who freezes the fugitives).It roughly followed the pattern of "the fugitive" of the sixties ,although Francis did not appear in all the episodes.My favorite one was based on "the most dangerous game" and featured German actor Horst Buchholz as the hunter,Jessica and Logan being the preys.Unlike the movie,neither Jessica nor Logan showed love feelings and when REM hinted at it ,the heroine simply answered: "He's only a friend" .

Correct me if I'm wrong ,but the last episode was not really an "end " :they probably intended to make more episodes.They did not,and it was too bad.

The film had a long list of problems. The book was complicated and episodic and the film left out most of it. There were also obvious problems like how could two sheltered city kids survive in the wilderness.

The series is far better written than the film. Better acted. The Film's actors overacted. While the series is obviously cheaply made, it does reuse some clips from the film as well as sets from Planet of the Apes and Lost in Space.

The series has time to flesh out its characters, where you didn't even have time to know them in the film. They resolve some of the inconsistencies from the film. Each of them carry food pills, entire meals in pill form. The only obvious logical problems are the men never grow beards and the women have perfectly blowdried 70s hairstyles.

It's certainly far better than dumbed down attempts at sci fi like the 6 Million Dollar Man. A shame it didn't last longer.

Good Lord! Another poster had a go at this series and he was bombarded with nine "not useful" votes. Should I be careful what I say here? When this series appeared it was gold. Every cast member, every costume, every turn in the story was gold. Logan's Run was hot stuff to my 12 year old eyes...even on my black and white television set!

Then, in Australia at least, the series vanished from the face of the earth for decades.

Last year, I finally found it again on YouTube and discovered that time has not been good to Logan's Run. It looks too low budget and, since 1977 or 1978, I have seen a few "manhunt" television shows/movies and Logan's Run does not measure up to the others. If you enjoyed this series in 1977, just keep the memories, don't track down the series in this century...you might not like what you get!

A show I recall enjoying in my teen years, it was nice to track down the feature length pilot episode. I hadn't then but have since seen the parent film and obviously to make a multi-episode series, numerous changes have to be made to allow the show to develop. That was the case here as two on the run on the big screen became three on the run on the small screen with the addition of android Rem as Logan and Jessica start out their no doubt extended search for a place called Sanctuary, pursued all the while by Logan's former friend, fellow Sandman, Francis.

I have to confess a youthful crush way back then for Heather Menzies which it was pleasant to recollect with this viewing but better yet was the story itself which seemed to condense two strands into one, the first being Logan and Jessica's escape from the City Of Domes and the second their strange encounter with a bunch of androids determined to pamper them to death in a neat inversion on the hoary old lunatics taking over the asylum plot-line, along the way bumping into their soon-to-be new ally Rem.

Viewed critically today, from over 40 years since its first broadcast, I can now see the budget restraints manifested in the locations, costumes, machinery and special effects deployed and sure the acting isn't of the highest standard either but overall I still enjoyed the storyline for this extended introductory episode and will try to catch the rest of the series to see if it matches up to my younger self's fond remembrance of it.

Logan's Run, based on the 1976 movie of the same name, was a good show. Gregory Harrison was Logan, a Sandman, Heather Menzies was Jessica. A Runner. Runners are people who want to live beyond the age of 30. In the futuristic society that Logan and Jessica live, it's against the law. When you reach your 30th

birthday, you're a dead man, or woman. Donald Moffat played the android Rem. Logan's Run originally aired on Friday nights at 9:00 pm, but was bounced around the time slots so much by CBS that when it finally ended in 1978, CBS didn't care whether it survived or not. It was never on the Sci-Fi Channel. It would also make a good DVD presentation.